There seems to be a drastic increase of people getting their Facebook and other social media accounts hacked and taken over. There are some relatively easy ways to help protect you and your accounts. One of the easiest ways to protect your Facebook and other social media accounts is to enable MFA (see Blog post on MFA). The question is, how do you enable it for Facebook?!
Log into your Facebook account and click the down arrow next to your name and Facebook Messenger in the upper right corner.
Under Settings & privacy, select “Settings” don’t worry; we will cover the options in future blogs.
Now on the left, select “Security and Login.”
Scroll down to “Use two-factor authentication.”
Select “Edit” to set it up.
GingerSec recommends you set up the “Authentication app” and “Text message (SMS).” This is to provide another way of logging into Facebook if one doesn’t work.
To get an authentication app go to the app store of your phone and download one of the following:
· Google Authenticator
· Microsoft Authenticator
· LastPass Authenticator Click on “Authentication app.”
This will prompt you for your password; enter that.
Once that is entered, you will get a QR code to scan with your authentication app. Open your authenticator app, select add account, and scan the QR code
After you hit “Continue,” you will be prompted to enter a “confirmation code,” which is the six-digit code on your authenticator app.
Put the code in and hit continue
After you hit “Done,” this will complete your authenticator app set up.
Follow all the steps from above to add “Text message (SMS).”
Select “Setup”
Put your mobile phone number in and hit “Continue.”
This will send a text message to your phone for you to enter
Saweet, you now have your Authentication app and text messaging set up for authentication into your Facebook account. Whenever you “or someone” else tries to log into your account, you will need to verify if it is authorized on your phone. Obtain Recovery codes (optional)
If you want to have a backup way to get into your Facebook account, select “setup” for “Recovery codes.”
You will need to put in the code for the authenticator app or select “Need another way to authenticate?” to use text messaging.
Once you put the code in, you will get an option to “Get codes.”
This will generate a list of codes for you to copy and/or download into a text file. After you copy them, you should save them in your password manager. These will be great for you if you need to recover your account.